Load Balancing in IP/MPLS Networks: A Survey

Ravindra Kumar Singh, Narendra S. Chaudhari, Kanak Saxena

Computer Applications, Samrat Ashok Technological Institute, Vidisha, India.
Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Indore, Indore, India.
Computer Science and Engineering, Jaypee University of Engineering and Technology, Guna, India.

DOI: 10.4236/cn.2012.42020                

Abstract

The present era has witnessed tremendous growth of the Internet and various applications that are supported by it. There is an enormous pressure on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to make available adequate services for the traffics like VoIP and Video on demand. Since the resources like computing power, bandwidth etc. are limited, the traffic needs to be engineered to properly exploit them. Due to these limitations, terms like Traffic Engineering, Quality of Service (QoS) came into existence. Traffic Engineering broadly includes techniques like multipath routing & traffic splitting to balance the load among different paths. In this document, we survey various techniques proposed for load balancing that are available on the Internet. We here try not to be exhaustive but analyze the important techniques in the literature. Present survey would help to give a new direction to the research in this realm.

Keywords

Traffic Engineering; Load Balancing; MPLS Networks

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1]	G. Lee and J. Choi, “A Survey of Multipath Routing for Traffic Engineering,” 2002. http://vega.icu.ac.kr/~gmlee/research/
[2]	A. Toguyeni and O. Korbaa, “DiffServ Aware MPLS Traffic Engineering for ISP Networks: State of the Art and New Trends,” Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, Vol. 1, 2009, pp. 5-13.
[3]	Z. Cao, Z. Wang and E. Zegura, “Performance of Hashing-Based Schemes for Internet Load Balancing,” Proceedings of the 19th Annual Joint Conference on Computer and Communications Societies, Tel Aviv, 26-30 March 2000, pp. 332-341.
[4]	K. Long, Z. Zhang and S. Cheng, “Load Balancing Algorithms in MPLS Traffic Engineering,” Proceeding of IEEE International Conference on High Performance Switching and Routing, Dallas, 29-31 May 2001, pp. 175-179.
[5]	D. Gao, Y. Shu, S. Liu and O. W. Yang, “Delay-Based Adaptive Load Balancing in MPLS Networks,” IEEE International Conference on Communications, New York, 28 April-2 May 2002, pp. 1184-1188.
[6]	J.-Y. Jo, Y. Kim, H. J. Chao and F. Merat, “Internet Traffic Load Balancing Using Dynamic Hashing with Flow Volume,” The Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System, Vol. 4865, 2002, pp. 154-165.
[7]	E. Salvadori and R. Battiti, “A Load Balancing Scheme for Congestion Control in MPLS Networks,” Proceedings of 8th IEEE International Symposium on Computers and Communication, Antalya, 30 June-3 July 2003, pp. 951-956.
[8]	Z. Zhao, Y. Shu, L. Zhang, H. Wang and O. W. W. Yang, “Flow-Level Multipath Load Balancing in MPLS Network,” IEEE International Conference on Communications, Paris, 20-24 June 2004, pp. 1222-1226.
[9]	B. Cui, Z. Yang and W. Ding, “A Load Balancing Algorithm Supporting QoS for Traffic Engineering in MPLS Networks,” 4th International Conference on Computer and Information Technology, Wuhan, 14-16 September 2004, pp. 436-441.
[10]	M. PGkkonen, “Providing QoS Guarantees by Load Balancing in MPLS Networks,” 7th International Conference on Advanced Communication Technology, Korea, 11 July 2005, pp. 939-943.
[11]	G. Yuan, Y. Chen, Y. Wei and S. Nie, “A Distributable Traffic-Based MPLS Dynamic Load Balancing Scheme,” Asia-Pacific Conference on Communications, Perth, 3-5 October 2005, pp. 684-689.
[12]	X. He, H. Tang, M. Zhu and Q. Chu, “Flow-Level Based Adaptive Load Balancing in MPLS Networks,” 4th International Conference on Communications and Networking in China, Xian, 26-28 August 2009, pp. 1-6.
[13]	J. Tang, C.K. Siew and G. Feng, “Parallel LSPs for Constraint-Based Routing and Load Balancing in MPLS Networks,” IEEE Proceedings of Communications, Vol. 152, No. 1, 2005, pp. 6-12.
[14]	X. Hesselbach and R. Fabregat, “The Impact over the Packets Sequence at the Output Interface in Load Balancing Strategies,” International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks, Nottingham, 18-22 June 2006, pp. 263-266. doi:10.1109/ICTON.2006.248448
[15]	S. I. Mohamed and K. M. F. Elsayed, “Distributed Explicit Partial Rerouting (DEPR) Scheme for Load Balancing in MPLS Networks,” 11th IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications, Sardinia, 26-29 June 2006, pp. 884-889.
[16]	J. Song, S. Kim and M. Lee, “Dynamic Load Distribution in MPLS Networks,” Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 2662, 2003, pp. 989-999. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-45235-5_97
[17]	K. Lee, A. Toguyéni and A. Rahmani, “Hybrid Multipath Routing Algorithms for Load Balancing in MPLS Based IP Network,” 20th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications, Vienna, 18-20 April 2006, pp. 165-170.
[18]	S. Avallone, V. Manetti, M. Mariano and S. Pietro, “A Splitting Infrastructure for Load Balancing and Security in an MPLS Network,” 3rd International Conference on Testbeds and Research Infrastructure for the Development of Networks and Communities, Lake Buena Vista, 21-23 May 2007, 2007, pp.1-6.
[19]	G. Murugesan, J. Jebarani and A. M. Natarajan, “Adaptive Granularity Algorithm for Effective Distributed Load Balancing and Implementation in Multiprotocol Label Switching Networks,” 15th International Conference on Advanced Computing and Communications, Guwahati, 18-21 December 2007, pp. 626-633. doi:10.1109/ADCOM.2007.84
[20]	T. C. Hung, et al., “Advanced Routing Algorithms and Load Balancing on MPLS,” 9th International Conference on Advanced Communication Technology, Gangwon-Do, 12-14 February 2007, pp. 1886-1891. doi:10.1109/ICACT.2007.358739
[21]	E. M. Sayed, E. Alfy, S. Z. Selim and S. N. Mujahid, “Solving the Minimum-Cost Constrained Multipath Routing with Load Balancing in MPLS Networks Using an Evolutionary Method,” IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, Singapore, 25-28 September 2007, pp. 4433-4438.
[22]	H. Wang and G.-S. Poo, “Load Balancing in the Provisioning of Hose Model Virtual Private Networks with Multi-Path Routing,” IET Communications, Vol. 1, No. 4, 2007, pp. 684-692. doi:10.1049/iet-com:20060300
[23]	A. Ferragut, D. Kofman, F. Larroca and S. Oueslati, “Design and Analysis of Flow Aware Load Balancing Mechanisms for Multi-Service Networks,” 4th EuroNGI Conference on Next Generation Internet Networks, Krakow, 6-7 December 2007, pp. 84-91.
[24]	R. Z. Shen and N. McKeown,“Designing a Fault-Tolerant Network Using Valiant Load-Balancing,” 2008. http://ihome.ust.hk/~ldcse/CSIT560_papers/Designing%20a%20Fault-Tolerant%20Network%20Using%20Valiant%20Load-Balancing.pdf
[25]	M. Antic and A. Smiljanic, “Oblivious Routing Scheme Using Load Balancing over Shortest Paths,” IEEE International Conference on Communications, Beijing, 19-23 May 2008, pp. 5783-5787.
[26]	F. Cugini, F. Paolucci, L. Valcarenghi, P. Castoldi and A. Welin, “Global Load Balancing of Zero-Bandwidth TE LSPs in MPLS Networks,” Conference on Optical Fiber Communication, San Diego, 22-26 March 2009, pp. 1-3.
[27]	Y. Q. Hua, et al., “Load Balance in Hierarchical Routing Network,” The Journal of China Universities of Posts and Telecommunications, Vol. 16, No. 6, 2009, pp. 72-77.
[28]	M. Antic and A. Smiljanic, “Routing with Load Balancing: Increasing the Guaranteed Node Traf?cs,” Communications Letters, Vol. 13, No. 6, 2009, pp. 450-452.
[29]	S. Cho, T. Elhourani and S. Ramasubramanian, “Resilient multipath Routing with Independent Directed Acyclic Graphs,” Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Communications, Cape Town, 23-27 May 2010, pp. 1-5.
[30]	S. Cho, T. Elhourani and S. Ramasubramanian, “Independent Directed Acyclic Graphs for Resilient Multipath Routing,” IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2012, pp. 153-162.
[31]	M. Hara and T. Yoshihiro, “Adaptive Load Balancing Based on IP Fast Reroute to Avoid Congestion HotSpots,” IEEE International Conference on Communications, Kyoto, 5-9 June 2011, pp. 1-5. doi:10.1109/icc.2011.5962957
[32]	J. W. Lin and H. Y. Liu, “Redirection Based Recovery for MPLS Network Systems,” Journal of Systems and Software, Vol. 83, No. 4, 2010, pp. 609-620. doi:10.1016/j.jss.2009.10.043